Otherwhere, Neverwhen
by Ocianne
Summary: Dreams are a window into other worlds, left behind in the clear light of day. But what happens when one dream reaches back across, and catches hold? Crossover with Echo Bazaar.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Neither Gosho's works nor Echo Bazaar are mine. Read and enjoy, delicious friend.

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><p>Otherwhere, Neverwhen<p>

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><p>"I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams." - Hamlet<p>

…

The night brings dreams.

One might say everyone dreams, but these are different. Strange, even for wisps of fantasy. They fade, less than half-remembered, upon waking, but there are... remnants.

_(Faded does not mean gone.)_

Strange, unconscious habits keep company with senseless associations. Peculiar flashes, scraps of inexplicable thought or instinct spun fragile as cobweb are just as quick to dissolve under the faintest scrutiny.

Such nonsense has no place in the clear light of day, not when there is always so much that needs proper attending to. So it is simply disregarded, brushed aside for (reality) more important things.

_And yet..._

…

Hakuba is acting oddly.

Kaito's noticed this because, well, it's a good idea to keep an eye on a detective bent on catching your alter ego. Especially when said detective is stymied only by lack of definitive proof and a sense of honor of tungsten steel. (The fact that he's brilliant and snarky and far too easy to poke at _and_ pokes back is irrelevant.)

So when new patterns begin creeping into Hakuba's behavior, he pays attention.

For now, it's been little things. Things that might be easily overlooked, or dismissed as part of his collection of foreign quirks and eccentricities - by those who do not pay enough attention to realize they don't fit the habits the detective arrived with.

Like the bag of striped oval peppermints that has suddenly found a permanent home in Hakuba's briefcase, offered freely to anyone who seems in need of charming or cheering. Or the slowing of habitually clockwork-precise footsteps to linger for just a moment longer outside the school doors, head turned toward the far side of the grounds where flowers are blooming in the sun. And the slight, courteous nods in passing toward the cats that consider Ekoda High their territory, as though from one professional to another.

He doesn't realize he's doing it.

The one time Kaito asks, after Hakuba acknowledges a scruffy calico by the school gate, the detective blinks in genuine surprise. Several moments pass while Hakuba looks back at the cat, mouth opening and closing a few times. When he finally turns again, the typical confidence in his gaze has been superseded by a glimmer that is not quite bewilderment, not quite unease, and entirely pensive.

"…Because."

…

The night brings dreams.

In the city of perpetual night, the bright, too-orderly, daylight place-that-isn't is the dream, nonsensical fantasy for all its improbable illusion of internal logic. Whatever subconscious knowledge or instinct it offers must be dismissed because the world doesn't work that way, especially not down here.

And while the universities have whole departments to contemplate and study things that don't (may not) exist, the city proper doesn't afford such luxury. Not unless one is looking to wake up in one of the morgues with no possessions, or to have a friendly chat with the ferryman.

But that wouldn't be wise. No.

.

Stay the course that led to here and now. Follow the paths that lead to secrets sometimes better left unknown and discoveries better left not found and choices better left unmade. The world above does not house the quarry that will provide satisfaction, and beneath does not allow for cowardice or second thoughts.

There will be a reckoning.

(_Justice, to sate the howling anguish that never fades, not since the loss of half-of-self to the cold and the pitiless dark.)_

.

Keep to the familiar safety of the shadows, lurking in the spaces between the candle-lights and the moonless dark. Follow the whispers. Find the people, find the coins, gather the stake to earn a place in the game. The opportunity was not available, before, but now...

There is a chance.

(_The gamble of a lifetime. Of a life. Because the promised prize is worth any risk, when all other ways to find what __went missing__ have failed._)

…

There are whispers circling the school. No one is quite sure what to make of this new strangeness - not Keiko, not Akako, not even Aoko.

Because while ignoring the occasional foreign quirk in Hakuba is easy, it becomes much more difficult when echoes start turning up in Kuroba. It's almost like they're moving in step to some beat no one else can hear.

Now it's not only Hakuba who bows slightly to cats and gestures like a gentleman for them to pass first. Or who inexplicably stares up at blue skies like they're among the most beautiful sights he's ever seen.

Of course, Kuroba's always had his own quirks and clowning. It would be just like him to decide to join the game, wouldn't it? See whether he can out-perform the other center of attention?

It would be easier to think so if either of them seemed to even be aware they were doing it at all.

.

It's happening again, Hakuba stilling during lunch to stare, blank-faced, at his bento box's contents. Which are perfectly ordinary fare, the sliced shiitake mushroom even arranged in an aesthetically pleasing pattern over the rice.

When he moves again, it is to slowly, methodically, pick the mushroom slices off and pile them in the box's lid.

This in itself would only be mildly odd - the Hakuba Saguru Fanclub's records having never noted an aversion before - except that when Kuroba leans over out of curiosity, he promptly winces in apparent sympathy. Without a word he offers Hakuba a few pieces of his own tempura, and after a moment's surprise Hakuba quirks a wry smile of unspoken understanding and accepts with a grateful nod.

But when they've nearly finished eating, Hakuba pauses and blinks, then glances between the mushroom and Kuroba with an expression that clearly (according to Akako, who is the official interpreter of the silent and subtle methods of communication that these two have turned nearly into an art form) asks, 'Wait, why did we just do that'?

When he meets Kuroba's gaze, the reply is equally silent. It runs something along the lines of, 'I haven't a clue.'

…

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><p>Echo BazaarFallen London is a browser-based game better experienced than described, so check out echobazaar. failbettergames. com. Join us in the Neath, or follow the forgotten dreams at echobazaar. failbettergames. com/Profile/MeijiHolmes.


	2. Chapter 2

Otherwhere, Neverwhen

...

—_shattering—_

_—frightened green eyes—_

_—a maddened howl in the dark—_

_—it shouldn't have been like this—_

_..._

There is something _very wrong_ with Hakuba this morning.

For one, the obsessively time-conscious blond walks into the classroom ten seconds before the bell rings rather than his habitual five-minute margin. For another, his eyes are unfocused as he slips into his seat with hardly a murmur of reply to various classmates' greetings—as if he's not really seeing them, as if something else is intercepting his gaze. Thirdly, whatever he's doing on the crisp page of his school notebook just out of Kaito's line of sight, the pen movements are completely wrong to be his neat, precise handwriting.

…Hakuba does not doodle_._

But most tellingly of all, he does not respond to being called upon by the teacher until his name is repeated for the _third _time_. _Not only does he have to ask Umeda-sensei to repeat the question yet again after a too-long pause, but even when the answer does come, it does so slowly, as if it has had to arrive from somewhere far away. It _is_ correct, but that's really not the point.

Akako has joined Kaito in darting concerned glances at the blond, but they're both too far behind his desk to get a good look. Consequently, as soon as the period ends Kaito moves up to catch a glimpse of the notebook before Hakuba can think to close it during break. Not that Hakuba seems to have registered any such thing, as it turns out.

As suspected, the page is noteless, but what it actually holds make Kaito's breath catch. A pair of eyes stares up from the paper, a moment of wide-eyed terror captured in excruciatingly lifelike detail. They're encircled by a growing pool of pure black ink as Hakuba's pen moves steadily and unceasingly over the remaining patches of white.

Not-memory flares, coloring the monochrome eyes a brilliant and suddenly familiar green even though he can't quite say where he might know them from.

"You found her?" He doesn't realize he's spoken the quiet words until he sees Hakuba twitch, and for some reason the reaction makes him wince.

—_tunnels in the dark to light in a cavern and a choice made foolishly but there is no second chance for this—_

He doesn't know where the impression-memory comes from, where the words are coming from, but they ring with terrible _truth_ in his ears even if what he's saying makes no sense, even if he doesn't know why he's saying it with such quiet regret. "It was… already too late, ne?"

Hakuba emits a little ragged gasp, hand tightening on the pen almost enough to snap the plastic. "It—it shouldn't have been that way, why didn't I _listen_ to him? I should have realized—should have known—"

What might be a chill runs down Kaito's spine. "Realized what?" he asks, as carefully as he can, but it's nowhere near careful enough, not when it triggers a little noise caught between being a broken, mirthless laugh and a sob.

"Shattered. Always shattering—her _EYES—_"

Hakuba gets no further, because Kaito has already caught him by the arm and is midway through propelling him Away From Here Right Now, snatching the notebook from the desk with his other hand.

The last thing they need right now is classmates curious at their sudden departure catching a glimpse of such intimate horror.

_(No commitments, no word given and no false hope. No need to let on that he would find out for himself regardless, nothing to make him bring that answer back and shatter the last small mercy left to grant. No reason not to fade back into the shadows and never return, hole up and get blind, stinking drunk to drown the memory of the girl who could never be saved from what she chose.)_

But a Detective would take a contract. Accept an obligation, pursue it all the way to the end, and perhaps not understand that it was already too late—

'Shattering.'

How he knows all this... doesn't matter, right now. It is enough that he can tell the truth of it, and that he can focus past it on _Down the hall-Down the stairs-Keep moving-Take the door-Head for the park_. Hakuba shudders in his grip, moving on autopilot, not crashing into things but obviously still not quite entirely present

Turn the corner, step onto grass, head for a tree that looks sufficiently private, and ease to the ground, shifting to grip Hakuba by the shoulders.

"Listen to me," He orders, low and intense, wiling Hakuba to pay attention. "It's not your fault. It's _not._ It was already too late before you even began to look."

That may be stretching the truth a little, he's not completely sure; but it was definitely too late by the time she could be found.

"There was nothing else you could have done for her."

Hakuba, frustratingly, doesn't seem to hear, half-crumpled against the tree trunk with his head slightly bowed and gaze fixed on a sight that isn't there.

"She was so frightened_._ I thought—I thought she _wanted—_was pleading for _help—"_ his voice chokes, he's breathing too fast,"He tried to _tell me,_ I didn't realize it really meant—I thought I was going to r_escue_ her, and instead—" there's another small, broken sound. "Oh God, her _eyes._"

…Social conventions be damned. Kaito pulls Hakuba forward, wrapping arms tightly across the detective's back as if to ground him with their pressure. Hakuba's arms remain limp, but his ragged breathing stabilizes slightly in response.

"It _wasn't. Your. Fault,_" Kaito repeats fiercely. The inexplicable conviction is short on clear details, but what he somehow knows of a place he's never been fits all too well with his developing understanding of Hakuba's horrors, and his arms tighten further to match the regret in his voice. "I should have reported what I saw as soon as I did. They might have called the search off, then. You shouldn't have had to see that."

Hakuba quiets further, eventually venturing a small, bewildered, "…What…?"

Not-memory remains as indistinct and elusive as smoke, but the curl of shadowed guilt is too true to dismiss. Kaito sighs softly. "Yeah. Sorry."

Another minute of silence, as Hakuba apparently tries to parse that. It doesn't look like much is making sense to him at all at the moment, though Kaito can't fault him for that. On the bright side, the mental gymnastics seems to have evened out his breathing. He's even remembered he has arms, judging by the way they've crept up to clamp around Kaito's torso like iron bands as though Kaito's the only solid thing there.

"You… saw?"

The vague bewilderment is still a _great_ improvement over nervous breakdown, so Kaito tries to keep that progress toward awareness going with a prompt nod, more felt than seen. "'Fraid so."

A deep breath, and he makes himself continue, drawing on memories ghostly as dreams. "He... he was still working on—what he did to her—" Hakuba's still fragile, don't mention the details of her preservation in stone aloud, "—but I could tell, even then. It was already too late to help. I just wish now I'd gone back to report what I found."

Hakuba's voice drops to a hollow whisper. "How long…?"

Kaito has to shake his head. "I don't know. I don't know when they sent you. But he had to have begun almost as soon as she disappeared."

He doesn't know exactly how long it takes. He doesn't know Loamsprach well enough to have learned those secrets—hell, he's only half—sure that that word refers to a language, one he's somehow certain he'll find no trace of here. But there is no doubt that whatever its mysteries, the process is nothing so simple as a mere entombment or spell to be broken.

It is not a path that allows turning back.

"I… time's hard to track. But—knew where to begin. The paths to find. Only…" A ragged breath. "Something else was—seemed—more important. To do first. Couldn't imagine…" That damned little broken noise again, along with a convulsive shudder, pained eyes closing against something that can't be blocked out that way. "...It won't _stop_."

Do not shake detectives that won't listen, especially when it's not really their fault. Kaito tries again, speaking very carefully and distinctly. "It wouldn't have made a difference. You didn't intend for that—" don't think about it too closely "—to happen. You're not to blame."

"…How can I _not_ be? She's dead. I was the one… I…" One arm releases Kaito so that Hakuba can bury his face in his hand.

Kaito sighs, pulls back and gently pries the hand away from Hakuba's face so that he can force Hakuba to meet his eyes. "You thought you were helping. You were _trying_ to help. That's what counts. You did the best you could with what you were faced with. What they had already chosen. It's not your fault you couldn't save them from what they had done, not when you tried as best you could. …And I should have done more, but I wasn't brave enough to face it. I'm sorry."

He repeats the apology and Hakuba's blamelessness again, just for good measure. Hakuba's eyes are perhaps a bit more focused, but still terribly hollow.

"…My choice." He pauses, and then laughs. The sharp edge to the mirthless sound could put a handful of razors to shame. "I need a drink."

"Not Bottled Oblivion," Kaito replies before his brain can catch up with his tongue. "Trust me on this one."

"Or mushroom wine," Hakuba murmurs, and Kaito agrees with an internal grimace that that would not be the way to go even if the stuff _existed _in Tokyo. "Whiskey, maybe."

"Mm… Could be tricky." Not that Kaito couldn't get around the underage bit, but that would require leaving Hakuba alone and Hakuba alone for long is a Bad Idea and even though he's humoring the blond because he's finally registering something besides haunting green eyes, alcohol doesn't seem like much of a better idea

"…Laudanum would be a bad idea, wouldn't it?" There's an almost dreamy quality to the question that Kaito doesn't like. Not at all. Hakuba's eyes are unfocusing again, and the joyless smile is no more reassuring than the earlier anguish. Kaito has the sudden worrying suspicion that Hakuba does not understand how his mind is wandering. That he might unknowingly let it drift too far and slip somewhere it cannot find the way back from is a suddenly frightening prospect.

Kaito can't let that happen. Not when he doesn't know if even Kid could reach there to steal him back.

Kaito casts about for some way to pull Hakuba back to the here and now, because he is _not_ losing one of his best hounds to a _nightmare_, dammit, even if something in the back of his mind is half expecting a cheerfully brisk, bright-buttoned gentleman with a stovepipe hat and eight fingers to appear from nowhere to whisk Hakuba away to… somewhere else – but that's not real either, the rest of his brain counters, and there _must_ be something that will work. Something to call Hakuba all the way to the Surface–

His gaze falls on the blooming shrubs a stone's throw away.

Flowers. In the sun.

"…Come on, this way."

Hakuba allows himself to be moved from the tree's shade easily enough, and Kaito sits them on the grass amid the scents spreading with the faint breeze. A moment's work with a pocketknife, and he shoves a small bunch of colorful blooms into the lax hands in Hakuba's lap and lifts them up to just under his nose.

"Here. Look. Flowers. See them? _Look_ at them, Hakuba. Remember where these come from?" One of Hakuba's hands curls lazily around the stems, but that's the only reaction. Kaito continues, carefully keeping his tone even and coaxing and not at _all_ desperate, "You know that place. Remember what it's like there? Remember real grass, and trees? Weather, actual weather, with wind, and clouds up in the sky? Remember how bright that sky is, beyond the clouds, how blue? What _day_ looks like? Sunlight, to make the flowers bloom…?"

He sounds uncomfortably like a television performer talking to a toddler, but he keeps at it, because what else is there for him to try? If this doesn't work…

But slowly, eventually, it does. Hakuba blinks back into focus, and after a moment lowers the handful of now-slightly-battered plants to look around with a blessedly purposeful air of something like curiosity tinged with wonder.

Kaito holds his breath, watching, and then is abruptly forced to shoot a hand out to shade Hakuba's eyes as the idiot tilts his head up to look _straight up at the sun–_

His exasperated noise catches Hakuba's attention, and the blond looks briefly puzzled at Kaito's presence beside him. But in the moment before Hakuba apparently dismisses it, closing his eyes with a slight smile and leaning back onto his hands to tilt his face up toward the sun's warmth, Kaito can see that the blond's eyes are finally clear.

He lets Hakuba bask for a moment without interruption, because he's still a bit shaken and it's a massive relief to see the detective back to looking _stable._ Then softly, he ventures, "Back in Japan now?"

The question startles Hakuba's eyes back open and earns Kaito a mildly bewildered glance. "Of course. Where else would I be?"

Not even Poker Face can completely hide the shock at the question, but after a few moments he has to answer with a wry smile. Because really… he might have guessed. Hakuba in his right mind does not deal in the impossible. "You'd be surprised."

Hakuba looks at him again, then at the park, and opens and closes his mouth as if about to ask a question and then thinking better of it. "Hnn."

"You weren't feeling well, and I figured you'd do better in the sun than in the nurse's office." The complete truth had never sounded more inaccurate.

Hakuba considers, thinking, and Kaito can almost _see_ the blank spaces in recent memory being catalogued and annotated, either with some logical explanation that blames Kaito's involvement in the affair or simply the mental note 'either not important or embarrassing, don't bother trying to remember'.

"I can't believe you dragged me off school grounds and I went along with it." But there's no rancor in Hakuba's tone.

"I'm a man of many talents." The grin is just icing on the cake. "Of course, seeing as we ditched after first period, we could just write off the rest of the day and get notes from Aoko after."

Hakuba looks mildly appalled. "I prefer my own notes, thank you… and our briefcases are still there in any case."

"Drat, foiled again." Hakuba raises an eyebrow at the English and he grins wider. "My evil plans to turn the model student into a juvenile delinquent!"

The second eyebrow rises to join the first, unimpressed. " '_Another_ juvenile delinquent', you mean?"

Kaito turns his nose up theatrically. "Hardly. _I_ am the class clown. _You_ are just my current project."

Hakuba actually rolls his eyes, which might be worth considering a success in its own right. "Let's go back before we miss any more of morning classes." He pauses, and frowns at his hands. "Why am I holding crushed flowers?"

"Because you're a Pretty Pretty Princess in disguise?" Kaito answers brightly, and is already running in the direction of the sidewalk before he has to duck the thrown flower-shrapnel.

"_Kuroba!"_

He cackles once and then saves his breath, because even though he has a head start, Hakuba is on the Track team and is the faster one along a straight line without obstacles.

Still. _So worth it._

And maybe it's better this way, the forgetting, at least so long as the dividing lines between dreams and reality don't start to blur again. So… Hakuba can forget, and continue to be the slightly smug detective who chases Kid and justice and catches criminals and has not even the nightmare of blood on his hands.

Kaito will remember for both of them.

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><p>Watchers of MeijiHolmes will find one of the conclusions to the missing Comtessa storyline in his recent journals. And now, Kaito is aware that something very strange is going on…<p>

To be continued. Please review!

Ocianne

8/11


	3. Chapter 3

_Otherwhere, Neverwhen_

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><p>Hakuba is drifting again.<p>

Not like last week, when he'd nearly taken his chair to the centimeter-size spider on Keiko's desk—until he'd actually _seen_ the thing and then very carefully put the chair down with a white face and quiet apology before pulling out a tissue and neatly eliminating it. No. Then, at least, Hakuba's eyes had been clear, if a bit confused.

Today, he's consumed three of his peppermints himself in the breaks between classes, he's been vague to Aoko, and he's currently ignoring the teacher drone on about verb agreement in English in favor of hunching over his notebook. There is something that Kaito does not like about the way Hakuba's pen is moving. He also doesn't care for the way Hakuba's hand keeps drifting up to his hair, not to neaten it, but as if to verify that some hurt lies only in memory.

Kaito hasn't had a chance to confirm anything because Hakuba has been just lucid enough to close the notebook during breaks, even as he spends them staring into some middle distance. Consequently, the second the lunch bell starts he springs to Hakuba's desk before Hakuba can react, an effort made easier by the fact that Hakuba has been responding more slowly to the environment as the morning wears on.

Hakuba ignores him completely.

The notebook is open to a double-page spread, covered in a handful of pen sketches. The top leftmost is hardly even a sketch, but somehow the bare lines still give an impression of cold stone and dim light and the ruins of a forgotten age. Below that lies a more complete sketch of a broken statue, beside an excruciatingly detailed statuette of a horse. The other page is incomplete, but a handful of rough lines rise into a series of progressively more detailed towers, stone seeming to shine from a source of unseen light. There are vague shapes on the spires, progressing in clarity until the rightmost one bears a band of nearly-distinguishable sigils. Below the tower, Hakuba's pen is re-etching the symbols in worryingly meticulous calligraphy.

Kaito's eyes widen, recognition stirring uneasily in the back of his mind as he counts the glyphs without thinking. The shapes are less eye-searing here than in impossible memory, but their sharp precision wakes the echo of an ache behind his eyes, an overpowering sense of dread and rage. The count abruptly registers—six shapes already twisting stark and black across the page—and his hand lashes out to catch Hakuba's wrist tightly before the pen can complete its downward arc to begin the seventh.

Hakuba blinks at the grip on his wrist, but doesn't react beyond vaguely trying to pull free.

"Not here, Hakuba-kun." The reminder is as quiet and gentle as Kaito can manage in the face of stomach-twisting revulsion and alarm. Potential fiery disaster or not, the last thing they need right now is to create an obvious spectacle. Kaito is all for spectacle in its proper place; this isn't it. "It's lunchtime. Did you bring a lunchbox today?"

Hakuba blinks again, slowly. "Lunch?"

"Yeah, y'know, that thing between breakfast and dinner." Kaito keeps gripping Hakuba's wrist in the hope that it will be enough to ground him, because much beyond it with everyone around would be awkward beyond even Kaito's usual pranks. Kaito hasn't been on speaking terms with embarrassment for years, but Hakuba holds onto his dignity with an iron grip and Kaito wants to still be on speaking terms with _him_ after he comes back to himself. "Why don't you close the book and check? I'm sure your housekeeper made you something tasty."

The saving grace of today's mess is that Hakuba doesn't seem to have left Tokyo completely, or to have been trapped in horror. He just acts as if he's been insulated from the real world by some obscuring fog. Judging by the rumble Kaito hears as Hakuba dreamily tucks the notebook away before pulling out his packed lunch, his stomach at least is still firmly in this reality. Kaito risks letting go long enough to retrieve his own bento and settle back in Kitiyama's vacated chair in front of Hakuba's desk, checking Hakuba's eyes as he does so. They're... better, actually focused on the lunchbox he's opening, but there's still a lethargy dulling his habitually precise movements.

Kaito chatters as they eat, trying to keep Hakuba's attention in the here-and-now with assignments, gossip, and anything else he can think of that is uniquely _here_, all the mundanities of life in present-day Tokyo. Hakuba appears to listen and makes the occasional one-word response, but he seems primarily focused on wolfing the meal. It's not until Kaito catches Hakuba surreptitiously eyeing Kaito's own lunch that he realizes Hakuba has just eaten every scrap of food he'd been given, down to the last grain of rice and several slices of _mushroom_.

"Still hungry?"

Hakuba's cheeks redden faintly. The odd behavior notwithstanding, he looks nearly back to normal as he quickly stands from the desk. "I seem to be unaccountably peckish today. I'm going down to the cafeteria."

As Hakuba goes, Kaito is too busy trying to figure out why that particular phrasing makes ice run down his spine to follow.

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><p>Players of Fallen London will recognize the Correspondence and Peckish plot elements. Please review!<p>

Ocianne

4/2013


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